


Dragged Further Away from the Shore (And Deeper into the Drink)

by Chaerring



Series: Your Songs Remind Me Of Swimming [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, All Sporky's fault, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Gen, I have so many feelings about this, Sheriff Stilinski loves his wife, Sirens, canon character death, ghost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 11:15:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/Chaerring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tricky thing about marrying a myth is that when they die, they don't go away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheGreatSporkWielder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatSporkWielder/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Teen Wolf.
> 
> This is all my fabulous beta TheGreatSporkWielder's fault. Thanks to her for betaing, like always. She asked what Parthenope's and the Sheriff's story was, and I couldn't resist. 
> 
> The title is from the Florence and Machine song "Swimming" and I recommend a listen to it before or after you read.

Caleb Stilinski meets Parthenope on a beach trip after his last semester in college. She's standing on a sandbar farther out than he thought the lifeguards allowed visitors to swim. A note, high and clear like the flute his mother used to play, sounds in his ears and he wakes up standing on the sandbar next to her. His legs sting like a bitch in the salt water and he looks down to find them cut all to hell from the shells and rocks he apparently crossed to get to her. He can’t remember taking a single step.

Her hair is inky black and strings across her face, blending into the feathers of wings twice their combined sized that he had somehow missed from the shore. 

_I would like to go to shore and be your wife._

Her voice isn't human. It’s beautiful like nothing he has ever heard. If he was a religious man he would have thought she was an angel. However, Caleb’s never been religious like his family and he’s pretty sure her teeth are more suited to making someone bleed than beaming at them with a holy light. The simple phrase soothes the pain in his legs and for a moment he slips back under a fogged spell, unable to tell where he’s at or even what he’s doing. 

She frowns and opens her mouth again. As he comes back to himself he can see the disappointment and the apology on her tongue, the way she takes a step back. He catches her wrist, small and weightless as though her bones are hollow, in the circle of his fingers, avoiding her nails that look sharper than his pocket knife ever dreamed of being. His other hand he uses to press his index finger to her lips and halt her. 

“Let me take you to dinner first. Then maybe we'll see about getting rings.”

The strange thing is, he means it. Briefly he considers that she’s enchanted him because she’s obviously not human, not normal, and definitely not the woman his mother wanted him to bring home. Then he looks into her eyes, deep and gray, moving like a storm, and smiles. Spell or not, he wants to, and as long as he wants to, he figures it’s okay.

********************************************************************************************************

The tricky thing about marrying a myth is that when they die, they don’t go away.

********************************************************************************************************

Caleb’s finally managed to get their son to sleep after his mother’s funeral. No child should ever have to see their mother beheaded and bloating in their favorite place to picnic. He doesn’t know how to handle this. Their boy is special, more special than Caleb knows how to understand or deal with sometimes, and he doesn’t know how to keep going without Parthenope. 

He’s almost not surprised to find her perched on the footboard of their bed when he goes to their room a few hours before dawn. He’s drunk and feeling guilty because he knows he won’t be sober by the time Thelxiope wakes up.

_I’m sorry, Caleb._

“Sorry isn’t going to help Thelxiope. One note from you, one goddamn note, and you could have escaped. You wouldn’t have even had to kill whoever the fuck attacked you!”

_And I would have led them straight back to him. He’s special, Caleb, so special. There’s never been one of us like him. We’ve all been women, and his voice is like the Old Ones’. Not the watered down version I inherited._

“He’ll accidentally kill us all without you here to teach him.”

_You don’t believe that even a little. Your grief is speaking._

“Maybe it is.”

****************************************************************************************************

From then on he had conversations with his dead wife and drank a little to relieve the guilt of not being able to give her back to their son.

****************************************************************************************************

_Derek Hale is innocent._

“I know, dear. That boy no more killed Laura than I killed you, but it looks bad.”

_Thelxiope will figure it out._

He raises his eyebrow and turns to look at her talons tapping on his desk. She didn’t pretend to be human at all now that she was dead.

“You used to say I would.”

_That was before the werewolves surfaced again, love._

Caleb waited expectantly for her to explain, for her to say more and fill him in, but she only smiled.

_Derek really is a nice boy underneath his growls._

She sounds more amused than anything and he doesn’t have time to try and pry it out of her when he can’t use his old methods of touch and intimacy. Sometimes it’s more painful having her over his shoulder most of the time than it is a comfort. 

He can’t let her go and he can’t move on, but he knew from that day on the beach that he never would be able to.

****************************************************************************************************

“He’s lying to me at every turn. Plying me with alcohol and taking research I shouldn’t even have at home.”

_He’s learning. It’s a process._

“A slippery process that’s going to land him in more trouble than I can protect him from. He’s not trusting me. How am I supposed to help him? Keep him safe? Make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone?”

_Have you ever thought, Caleb, that it’s his turn to protect you? And he will hurt someone. Thelxiope will likely kill someone before he comes of human age. It’s in our nature. The trick is in whether or not he stops there._

“I can’t--- Parthenope---”

_Worry later, and rest for now._

********************************************************************************************************

One night she wakes him up raging in her ghostly way. Nothing like the fury she was once capable of alive, but still plenty fierce enough to alarm him.

_Argents. **Pornea.**_

He hadn’t heard her curse so vehemently since she was giving birth.

“The arms dealers? What about them?”

Her eyes flash and if her wings had been corporeal they would have made a hurricane in his office.

_Watch them, Caleb. Christopher is honorable and Allison is a child, but the others, do not turn you back to them, beloved.They are more monstrous than those they hunt._

It strikes him suddenly, that his wife isn’t simply angry, she’s terrified of this family who had moved to Beacon Hills less than a year ago. That, more than anything makes him heed her words. His wife was the most terrifying person he knew. He couldn’t imagine what could scare her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to TheGreatSporkWielder for betaing for me.
> 
> Thank you so much everyone who has commented and left kudos!
> 
> ALSO everyone needs to click the next button listed by the series and check out TheGreatSporkWielder's take on the Sheriff's and Parthenope's first meeting.

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if the Hale kid is a problem for Stiles?”

_I don’t know why you won’t call him by his name anymore. **Stiles.** It’s not even a name. It’s the pluralized form of a tool. Our son is not a tool._

“You’re avoiding the question, dear, and it’s what he wanted. He asked me to call him Stiles.”

_You’re his father. You could have denied him that wish._

“Parthenope. The question.”

He watches her feathers ruffle a little as she adjusts her wings and slides into the chair next to him.

_Define problem._

He stares incredulously at her. 

“Your son takes after you _so much_.”

She beams, more than a little pleased about that and he sighs. He knows better than to try and make that sound like an insult to either of them. 

_I know._

“Okay, problem as in _dangerous_ , intending to cause Thelxiope harm. Doing anything to our son that he hasn’t explicitly consented to. I have a right to ask these questions when there’s a full grown man, werewolf by your admission, crawling in and out of my _underage_ son’s bedroom window.”

_Oh, Caleb._

“Nuh uh, missy. You don’t get to ‘Oh, Caleb’ me like I’m being silly and over protective.”  
She throws back her head and he nearly closes his eyes to just listen to her laugh. It’s a rare thing nowadays with their family so stressed.

_If anything, our son is a danger to Derek. Or he might become one._

She frowns a moment and then makes a cutting motion with her hand. He knows to leave that particular set of questions alone and refocus on his original one, but before he can, she continues.

_Thelxiope is Derek Hale’s mate, and though I’m not quite sure yet, I believe Thelxi’s note will sound for Derek once he’s pulled himself together and found it._

“ _Mate?_ What--He’s fifteen!”

She raises her eyebrow and waits for him to stop.

“Has anyone bothered to inform Thelxiope of this? Has Hale told him?”

_No. The poor boy is trying not to acknowledge it._

“What. Does he not think Thelxiope is good enough for him?”

_**Caleb.** Kate Argent seduced him and murdered his family. He’s not going to take advantage of Thelxiope. Derek doesn’t want to acknowledge the bond because he’s afraid of becoming Kate._

“That’s ridiculous.”

Caleb has known Derek at a distance for all of the boy’s life except the past few years since his family’s death. He could have become something horrible, but from what Caleb has seen Derek is the same quiet boy that had left.

_It’s something he needs to learn himself._

Caleb grins and reaches out to curl a ghostly strand of hair around his finger. He can only feel the barest brush of it, but the look of it around his finger is almost the same as always.

“What if we told him I married a woman millenniums older than me?”

She swats at him and laughs again.

********************************************************************************************************

_You could take it off, you know._

Caleb looks away from the photos of Matt’s body and up at his wife. For once, her wings are gone. She looks like the wind has gone out of her and the weight of the sea is in her eyes.  
“Take what off?”

He hopes she isn’t talking about his badge, because that has been missing for days and it feels like missing a limb. There is no way he can abandon his position in the county’s time of need. Surely, she knows him better than that.

Parthenope purses her lips as he watches before she settles on the edge of the chair in front of his desk and leans forward, looking down at the surface.

_Your wedding ring. You’re a widower._

Caleb doesn’t have a response to that. He doesn’t understand even where it has come from. They have never talked about his decision to continue wearing his ring. His wife is still with him even if he is the only one who can see and hear her. Therefore, in his mind, he is still married. He will be forever married to her. Death _hadn’t_ done them part.

“Why would you say that?”

Panic seizes his chest momentarily and he leans towards her, resting his hand over the slight feel of hers.

“ _Parthenope._ Parthenope, you’re not leaving, are you?”

She blinks her stormy eyes at him just once, looking as surprised as he felt.

_No. Where would I go even if I wanted to?_

“I don’t know, but why would you tell me to take it off if you’re not leaving?”

Her shoulders bob up and down like a bird’s and she avoids his eyes.

“Honey...Tell me.”

_Melissa McCall is a lovely woman._

If his wife didn’t look so miserable, Caleb would honestly have burst out laughing.

“ _Melissa?_ I’m not interested in Melissa. _At all._ Never have been.”

Parthenope’s posture stiffens like she can tell he wants to laugh at her, and this time she does meet his eyes.

_It’s an easy conclusion to make. You’re both in service professions that deal with trauma. You’re both single in the eyes of the world. Your sons are best friends and therefore, you’re frequently thrown toget--_

“Stop. Honey, just stop. You’re forgetting a very important thing. I married you. Forever. No takebacks. No changes just because your state of being isn’t the same.”

_I’m not a real wife any longer._

Caleb reaches forward, using the half-there feel of her chin to tilt her head towards him.

“Nonsense. You’re my wife until I say you’re not, and that will never happen. You’re stuck with me, longer than you thought, probably.”

Something changes in her posture, like a knot untying or a cloud moving away and Caleb relaxes when she smiles.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles goes missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has been reading and leaving me feedback! :D And thanks to my wondrous beta TheGreatSporkWielder! 
> 
> I apologize for the long wait!
> 
> Also, some minor Scott bashing here, not because I hate him, but because his reaction to Stiles's kidnapping was baffling, and Parthenope is a product of my feelings.

The lights go down on the field and Caleb’s hand goes to his hip and the gun that isn’t there. He can see the motion of Parthenope’s wings in the dark as she takes to the air screeching. She’s shouting too quickly in Greek; he can’t understand any of it except for the name _Argent_. Just a moment ago they’d been celebrating. Stiles has just won the State Championship for his team even though it was his first time on the field. He had scored three points, not only making up the difference, but pushing them over the top for the win. His son is the MVP of the game, possibly of the year, and his moment has just been stolen. 

Reflexively, Caleb reaches out for Melissa to be sure she’s safe, that she hasn’t moved, but instead he finds air. Distantly, he can hear her screaming for Scott from somewhere on the edges of the field, but he can’t fathom how she got down the bleachers without hurting herself. The lights begin to come back on, ending the screams and he hurries down the steps and onto the grass. Melissa’s already running to a body, a player down on the field. 

Caleb’s heart stutters in his chest painfully and he can feel his body move forward, speed up as it moves towards the crowd surrounding the boy on the ground. He doesn’t want to think about the possibilities. He can’t begin to. Parthenope’s still soliloquizing her rage in the sky and he can’t comprehend a word. He’s got no warning from her what he might be about to see. 

He reaches the crowd and pushes a team member out of the way, staring down at the player for a moment as Melissa takes charge. It’s the Whittemore kid. The one Caleb hadn’t been able to keep from putting a restraining order on his son even though Parthenope had assured him what Stiles had done was for Jackson’s own safety and the rest of the town’s. His stomach is gutted and his face is as white as a sheet, but Caleb can’t help but feel relieved it’s not his boy laying on the field. 

Knowing he can’t do much more than wait for the EMTs and the actual on-duty cops to get there, he turns, looking for Stiles. Surely his son is right there in the middle of everything. He scans jersey numbers as the last players take off their helmets to stare, but there’s no number twenty-four anywhere. He keeps looking, turns all the way around scanning the crowd, zeroing in on a shaved head there or a waving hand, but none of them are---

Parthenope releases a mournful note above his head like he has never heard from her before.

“Where’s Stiles?”

In that moment, all of his training abandons him and he looks around just as wildly as any parent would.

“Where the hell is my son?!”

********************************************************************************************************

Later, once he’s been able to gather his wits and remember his profession, he still wants to wring Scott’s neck when his son’s best friends tries to tell him not to worry. _Freaked out from all the attention?_ It was no wonder Stiles always referred to himself as the brains of his and Scott’s operation. It was one thing to know Scott was lying because Parthenope was his secret informant, but it was a completely different one to know outright because Scott couldn’t come up with a lie that had anything to do with Stiles’s personality. 

Caleb didn’t understand. The boy is a werewolf, capable of tracking Stiles. Of chasing after him far faster than Caleb ever could, but he stood around in the locker room, not even looking worried. Parthenope had assured him that Stiles still hadn’t told anyone what he was, and no one had figured them out that she could tell, not even the Argents with their apparent extensive experience. If Scott really thought Stiles was human and in trouble, why wasn’t he more worried? Perhaps there is even more going on than Caleb and Parthenope know, but he can’t imagine anything that would take precedence over their son’s life.

_What happened with us that we let our son be best friends with that fool? Scott McCall, the reluctant near-useless werewolf that can’t even realize when his best friend is in danger._

Caleb snorts as he swings into his car. 

“We let him make his own friends.”

_Hmph. Surely he knew better...._

Caleb just shakes his head at his wife and concentrates on driving. It isn’t until he’s pulling into their driveway that she speaks again.

_If you went to sleep--_

He’d already thought about this course of action. Parthenope has an unique perspective and abilities that would let her search for their son more easily without him, but she is only one being. He feels he needs to get as many humans as possible looking out for his son before he takes himself out of the game by going to sleep so that Parthenope can search untethered. 

“No. Not yet, there are a few other things I can try. Some calls I can make. If nothing comes of them---then you can go.”

He doesn’’t need to look at her face to feel the disgruntlement and worry there, so he keeps his back to her as he enters the house.

_And what if we’re too late? What if it’s not enough---He could be outed so easily. We could find him like--_

“ _Stop._ Parthenope, please, stop.” He stops at the landing on the stairs and looks down at her where she’s paused at the bottom.. “You’ve had faith in him through this mess so far, don’t give up on him now.”

Parthenope’s storm grey eyes swim unusually with tears and he knows it is different, and maybe even more difficult for her than him. Despite her death, he knows his wife is used to thinking of herself and her kind as timeless and very nearly indestructible. Since the supernatural has come back to town she seems to have applied that to Thelxiope and now she is being faced with the reality that he feels everyday of how fragile their family really is.

**Author's Note:**

> The word _pornea_ is supposedly an old greek word for 'fornication' or 'fucking'. It's probably wrong, or at the very least not in the correct tense, but I'm sure you get the idea anyway.
> 
> Feel free to follow me/check me out on tumblr at putonhisuniverse.tumblr.com . I love getting questions in asks, or here in comments about my fics.


End file.
